NHL Player Goal Total Picks for the 2022-23 Season: Ovechkin Still Among The Best
Seeking out value when it comes to individual goal totals on the NHL Futures market does tilt toward the negative side. Here are 10 players who should offer some value going Over or Under their 2022-23 NHL regular-season goal totals.
Every year there are players in the NHL who surpass expectations when it comes to goal scoring, it's usually due to a random spike in shooting percentages.
Players changing lines or moving to new situations could reasonably score at a different rate, but a player's track record gives the best indication for what they might do in the future.
I have been projecting hockey stats for more than 20 years, and my projections tend to be conservative, which is why I might find more value on Unders.
Here are 10 goal total picks that should offer value this season (odds via DraftKings Sportsbook, Caesars Sportsbook, and Barstool Sportsbook).
Best Values on NHL Goal Futures
Alex Ovechkin Over 44.5 (-110 via Caesars)
Siding with a 37-year-old who is consistently in the spotlight is not where I would typically seek value, but Ovechkin is a unique case. He scored 50 goals last season and has scored 45 or more in four of the past five, with the only miss coming during the shortened 2020-2021 season (and he still finished with 24 goals in 45 games).
Aging curves and the absence of playmaker Nicklas Backstrom suggest that Ovechkin should be in the decline phase of his career, but if Ovechkin is still generating 4.3 shots per game, the goals will follow.
Brayden Point Under 35.5 (-115 via DraftKings)
During both of Tampa Bay’s Stanley Cup runs, Point scored 14 goals in 23 playoff games. That's phenomenal production in relatively small samples, but he has surpassed 35 goals just once in six NHL seasons.
Last season, he scored 28 goals in 66 games, which would be a 35-goal pace in 82 contests. One reason to be cautious when projecting Point’s goal total is that he is already a high-percentage finisher, with a 17.1% shooting percentage for his career. That leaves little room for variance.
Chris Kreider Under 40.5 (-112 via Barstool)
Kreider never scored more than 28 goals in a season before netting 52 last year, and his 20.2% shooting percentage was a career high, which suggests there is little chance he will duplicate that production.
After he scored 26 of his 52 goals on the power play, the Blueshirts have no incentive to diminish Kreider’s impact in that spot, so that should give him a higher floor. However, it still makes sense to expect Kreider to go Under this total.
Zach Hyman Under 28.5 (-115 via DraftKings)
The Edmonton Oilers winger has made his mark as a complementary winger alongside some of the premier talents in the game. First, with Auston Matthews in Toronto, and now alongside Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in Edmonton.
As this season nears, it looks like Evander Kane will be skating on McDavid’s left wing, with Hyman playing on Leon Draisaitl’s line. Though Draisaitl is great, McDavid assisted on 19 of Hyman’s career-high 27 goals last season, so it's difficult to project a new career high.
Jack Eichel Under 34.5 (-110 via Caesars)
Vegas’ No. 1 center has scored more than 35 goals in a season once, when he had 36 in 68 games for Buffalo in 2019-2020. A neck injury that required surgery obviously hindered him since, and he has 16 goals in 55 games across the past two seasons.
He's managed to generate 3.91 shots on goal per game after arriving in Vegas last season, so he'd need to score on only 11% of his shots over an 82-game season to score 35 goals.
However, that's a little higher than Eichel’s career shooting percentage (10.5%), and his durability concerns push me to the Under.
Jonathan Marchessault Over 25.5 (-115 via DraftKings)
When Bruce Cassidy took over as the Vegas Golden Knights head coach, he indicated that the "Misfits Line" of Marchessault, William Karlsson, and Reilly Smith could be broken up. That would offer Marchessault the opportunity to skate with either Eichel or Mark Stone, or even both, and that is enough to like Marchessault to stay productive this season.
The 31-year-old has scored at least 26 goals three times in his career, and during the shortened seasons of 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, Marchessault was on pace for 26 or more goals in both of those seasons, too.
Andre Burakovsky Under 25.5 (-115 via DraftKings)
Burakovsky scored a career-high 22 goals for Colorado last season, and that earned him a five-year, $27.5 million contract with Seattle, with which he will likely get more ice time. However, that ice time will not offer the same quality of linemates he had with the Avalanche.
The 27-year-old winger is a skilled playmaker and should improve Seattle’s offensive output, but I’m wary about expecting his Colorado production to transfer to a lesser squad.
Evgeny Kuznetsov Under 25.5 (-112 via Barstool)
A wonderful playmaker who had a terrific bounce-back season in 2021-2022, Kuznetsov has scored more than 25 goals once in his career, when he had 27 goals in 2017-2018. The Capitals are facing the prospect of not having Nicklas Backstrom for much of the season, so they will be desperate for Kuznetsov to produce offensively.
However, he scored only 24 goals while averaging a career-high 20:17 of ice time per game last season, so there is not a lot of room for increased goal-scoring.
Mathew Barzal Under 23.5 (-112 via Barstool)
With Lane Lambert taking over as the Islanders head coach, the expectation is that the team will open up more offensively. That should offer more opportunities for Barzal, the team’s most dynamic threat.
The problem, though, is that Barzal is not really a shooter. He scored a career-high 22 goals as a rookie and the shortened season - when he had 17 goals in 55 games - was the only time in his career he was on pace to exceed 23.5 goals in a full season. Therefore, it would be more reasonable to expect Barzal’s point totals to climb before expecting a new career high in goals.
Nick Suzuki Under 25.5 (-112 via Barstool)
Montreal’s newly named captain has made steady progress in his first three NHL seasons and had a career-high 21 goals and 61 points last season. Like Barzal, he is more of a playmaker than a finisher. So though there is plenty of reason to like Suzuki’s development path, it is also fair to be skeptical that the 23-year-old will exceed last year’s goal production by five.
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